If rewards could make good
poets, their great master has not been wanting on his part in his
bountiful encouragements; for he is wise enough to imitate Augustus
if he had a Maro. The Triumvir and Proscriber had descended to us
in a more hideous form than they now appear, if the emperor had not
taken care to make friends of him and Horace. I confess the
banishment of Ovid was a blot in his escutcheon; yet he was only
banished, and who knows but his crime was capital? And then his
exile was a favour. Ariosto, who, with all his faults, must be
acknowledged a great poet, has put these words into the mouth of an
Evangelist; but whether they will pass for gospel now I cannot
tell:-
"Non fu si santo ni benigno Augusto,
Come la tuba di Virgilio suona;
L'haver havuto in poesia buon gusto,
La proscrittione iniqua gli pardona."
But heroic poetry is not of the growth of France, as it might be of
England if it were cultivated. Spenser wanted only to have read the
rules of Bossu, for no man was ever born with a greater genius or
had more knowledge to support it.
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